Striving To Be The Best
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday November 7, 2001
Leaders from business, industry, education and the student body have called for whoever wins this weekend's federal election to show leadership and to honour promises to boost public investment in Australia's higher education system.
The captains of industry and education to whom the Herald spoke maintained that the new government must accept responsibility and invest in universities to stop Australia falling further behind other leading industrialised countries, especially in the areas of engineering, science and information and communications technologies (ICT).
Concerns that we are lagging would have seemed unthinkable only a decade ago, for a country in which the quality of research and development has always compared favourably to richer, larger nations.
For all the hype, there is little rock-solid evidence of any failure of our higher education system. Employers First chief executive, Garry Brack, points out that employers remain satisfied with the quality of university degrees because graduates are arriving in the workplace with a "a trained intellect, into which [employers] are prepared to inject the necessary workplace skills".
But the sheer weight of several key indicators suggests one of two trends: either we have carefully constructed a way of keeping pace internationally while spending less and less on education and research, or Australian higher education is in crisis.
OECD statistics from last year show that Australia rated just 20th of 28 industrialised countries in the educational attainment levels of people aged between 25 and 34. Over the past decade, student to teacher ratios in universities have jumped from 14.5 students for every teacher, to 19.4:1, according to the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee (AVCC).
Gavin Brown, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney, calculated that investment in the "Group of Eight" Australian universities was $24,279 a student - well below the amount spent by flagbearing universities in other Western nations. Leading American state universities spent $69,176 a student, while in Britain the figure was as high as $64,371. In Hong Kong it was $74,159 and in Japan $110,545.
The AVCC says that since 1981 the proportion of university funding met by government has shrunk from 90 per cent to about 50 per cent. It claims private schools receive more government funding (55 per cent) than "so-called public universities".
The Coalition and Labor have committed to extra spending on higher education and to additional student places, although both policies propose a fraction of the $8 billion over 10 years that the AVCC wanted.
The Coalition's plan, Investing in Higher Education, includes spending $198.3 million to create 28,000 new undergraduate student places over five years, with priority given to ICT, maths and science students. The Minister for Education Training and Youth Affairs, Dr David Kemp, also announced a new HECs-style Postgraduate Education Loans Scheme (PELS) which he expected to encourage an extra 30,000 people into postgraduate study. The policy included several initiatives to boost research, including 225 "Federation Fellowships" each year for five years - each worth $225,000.
Labor's $3.13 billion Knowledge Nation plan includes $985.9 million to be spent in universities over five years, with most to be spent in 2005-06. Of that, $493 million is for a "university improvement fund" promised to ease the complaints of teachers and students, and $320 million is allocated to the new University of Australia Online. Labor promises to create an extra 100,000 student places by 2010 and to lift the income threshold at which HECs fees must be repaid from 2003.
Peter Greenwood, president-elect of the Institution of Engineers Australia, says the proposals of both major parties sound promising, but they must be honoured.
"There's a strong feeling among the community that something has to change and it requires real leadership," he warns.
The state of tertiary education shot to national prominence three weeks ago when media baron Rupert Murdoch claimed that urgent support was needed for higher education or else Australia risked "global irrelevance".
Murdoch is far from alone in his strong stance. The same day he spoke, Dr John Schubert, president of the Business Council of Australia, called for increased investment in education and training to build long-term skills and learning capacities.
"Australia's business leadership recognises this as perhaps the single most important short-, medium- and long-term issue facing the country," Schubert says.
The risks of continuing with low public investment in tertiary education, according to Professor Ian Chubb, president of the AVCC, are that the quality of qualifications, teaching, research and our international reputation could be damaged.
Engineering is another area of concern. John Agnew, executive officer of the Australian Council of Engineering Deans, says our engineering profession could lose respect worldwide if university standards continue to slide.
"Engineering converts scientific principles and technology into products that the community can use and export. If you don't have good engineering, then you don't have good products," he says.
Greenwood says there have been major changes in engineering away from public employment (and training) and towards private contracting. This means employers feel less obliged to train on the job, at a time when universities are offering less hands-on teaching and research. "The situation is like a rainwater drum. You can't keep drinking from the bottom without putting something back in."
This catch-22, Greenwood says, is that lecturers - who once carried out crucial research - are stretched to the limit. Since 1986 the number of engineering students beginning degrees has grown by 150 per cent, while the number of full-time staff has fallen by 3 per cent.
Investment in ICT education is seen as a pressing need because of the growing influence of technologies in our lives. According to the Breaking the Skills Barrier report, by the Australian Information Industry Association, ICTs have grown at about 12 per cent a year since 1996 and have contributed more than a quarter of Australia's 4.1 per cent growth in "labour productivity" between 1996 and 1999.
Prins Ralston, immediate past president of the Australian Computer Society, says we need to develop some of the basic technologies underpinning business or "face losing control over our own destiny".
"It is important to be self sufficient in core technologies so we aren't held to ransom by overseas economies. When you no longer control your destiny in terms of controlling the technology you use, you are buffeted around by those who do control them."
For example, look at the new Windows XP computer operating system. It directs us towards many American IT products, and we could become so dependent on it that we'd be crippled if there was a corporate collapse.
Ralston says the proof that we do not develop enough homegrown ICTs is the "trade deficit" between the export and import of technology. According to the ACS, Australia imported almost $16 billion more hardware, software and services than we exported in 2000-01. Last year we ranked just 23rd out of 29 OECD nations as a producer of ICT equipment.
Ralston wants to see the number of HECs-funded ICT course places doubled and academics' salaries improved.
"We should have some of our top-flight ICT people passing on their knowledge to up and coming graduates. Anybody worth their salt would be getting twice as much by working in the industry as a lecturer does."
Complicating the argument over university funding is the fact that overall, universities have more money these days, mainly because of a soaring interest in tertiary study which makes private sector investment and full-fee paying (usually overseas) students easier to attract.
The National Union of Students says an increasing reliance on private funding steers university resources away from their core business of education and research.
NUS president David Henderson claims business now has more clout in what is taught because it is effectively "making up the shortfall in public funding".
"There is a general trend towards vocational education rather than critical thinking. In the long term, graduates who can create new concepts and think for themselves so they can critique what is being put in front of them - rather than perform a function according to a script - will be driving the economy."
THE POINT
Students have a better chance of becoming independent thinkers if governments put more money into education.
LACK OF ATTENTION
Iain Giblin began to notice changes in student life towards the end of his double degree in music and education at the University of NSW.
As an undergraduate and postgraduate student and now as a casual lecturer, he has been at the university since 1993.
From 1995 onwards, resources such as international research journals began to disappear from the library as subscriptions were cut back, but fees continued to rise. Essential course equipment once paid for by the university, such as musical instruments, began to be rented out. A fee was attached to course notes.
At the same time, he began to notice tutorials started filling up and one-on-one contact with lecturers diminished.
Giblin, 29, is studying a PhD in cognitive science and works part-time as a humanities lecturer, so he has regular contact with students.
"During my first year I had a philosophy lecturer who made an effort to have a personal interview with every student. I don't know of that happening at all any more. It has become impractical.
"There is a lack of personal attention and tuition. These [humanities] subjects are difficult to grasp - they require individual attention. But when you have 30 people in a tutorial and 60 people in a lecture, it's difficult to attend to each person."
Giblin says that since full-time administrative positions have disappeared from the school of music, academics have had to do their own filing, photocopying and ordering equipment.
He says the effect on the morale of academics has been "devastating".
"If you ask a lecturer 'how's it going', you are likely to get a pretty grim response."
© 2001 Sydney Morning Herald
Share This